I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

In a speech and Q&A for which he was reportedly paid $20,000, Lehrer blamed his many deceptions, large and small, on “arrogance,” “a consistent asymmetry in the way I noticed error” and “carelessness matched with an ability to explain my carelessness away.”

Ever the original thinker, even when he’s plagiarizing from press releases, Lehrer apologized abjectly for his actions but pointedly avoided promising to become a better person. “These flaws are a basic part of me,” he said. “They’re as fundamental to me as the other parts of me I’m not ashamed of.”

Still, Lehrer said he is aiming to return to the world of journalism, and has been spending several hours a day writing. “It’s my hope that someday my transgressions might be forgiven,” he said.

How, then, does he propose to bridge the rather large credibility gap he faces? By the methods of the technocrat, not the ethicist: “What I clearly need is a new set of rules, a stricter set of standard operating procedures,” he said. “If I’m lucky enough to write again, then whatever I write will be fully fact-checked and footnoted. Every conversation will be fully taped and transcribed.”

“That is how, one day, I’ll restore a measure of the trust I’ve lost,” he added.

Lehrer used several analogies to make his case. At one point, he likened himself to the FBI, which adopted new failsafes after a case involving fingerprint misidentification revealed systemic problems. He compared his new “standard operating procedures” — a phrase he must have used at least 10 times — to the “forcing functions” that software designers employ to guide users away from accidents.

Lehrer’s analogies were indeed illuminating, if not in the way he meant them to be. A writer who makes up quotes by Bob Dylan isn’t like a police agency in the grip of groupthink or an iPhone user who inadvertently deletes his contacts. The difference is intention.

Well engineered process and properly aligned incentives can lower the error rate for journalists just as they can for any sort of worker, but rules and rewards don’t explain why the vast majority of us strive to get it right every day, whether or not there’s a tape recorder running. We do it because getting it right is itself the end toward which we’re striving. The temptation to fabricate a quote or pass off someone else’s writing as our own just doesn’t exist. We don’t want to do those things any more than an NFL quarterback wants to be handed the Lombardi Trophy without playing a game.

The oddness of Lehrer’s thinking came into focus when he allowed himself to consider some of the factors that may have eased his way down the path of iniquity. One, he said, is his high intelligence. “For some cognitive biases, being smart, having a high IQ, can make you more vulnerable to them,” he said.

Another is just how in demand he was as a writer, speaker and all-around public intellectual. Why consider yesterday’s mistakes, he suggested, when you can contemplate tomorrow’s $20,000 speech? ”For me, the busyness was a way to avoid the reckoning,” he said.

Both of those explanations are probably true, insofar as they go. Now is not the time to be trotting them out. How could he not understand how they’d come across?

Lehrer’s intention in submitting himself to a public grilling was to show the world that he’s ready to return to journalism, that we can trust him because he knows now not to trust himself. All he proved is that he’s not wired like the rest of us. If he can figure out why that is, that would be a neuroscience story worth publishing.

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Not exactly. I walked away thinking: This is a guy who needs to spend a LOT more time thinking trying to understand himself. “I did it because it was too easy for me to do” is just another pat non-answer. He’s attacking this as an intellectual problem, another bad habit that can be solved through some simple lifehacks. I think he was as honest as he’s capable of being right now, and I don’t mean that in an approving way.

Lehrer’s performance today was truly one of the most bizarre things I have witnessed in nearly two decades in journalism. Basic journalism 101 stuff like recording interviews and NOT MAKING STUFF UP was wrapped in odd, pseudo scientific jargon rather than simple common sense. His arrogance remains simply stunning and he has hurt the credibility of everyone who labors long hours in this demanding profession.

“For some cognitive biases, being smart, having a high IQ, can make you more vulnerable to them.” Just to clarify, here he’s actually repeating his misinterpretation of the study he misinterpreted in “Why Smart People Are Stupid.”

Why does he have less morals than the MSM who decide not to pursue questioning the president because they are members of the same party? How does this rate to Dan Rather and the fake documents on Bush produced just before an election? He looks at what is passing for journalism, and he must think he isn’t all that bad. Remember, people believed his stories and didn’t question them for a long time because they had biased uncritical belief in the narrative so they didn’t question the story. He will fit in fine with the MSM.

This would all be “just a dream”… if in the last page of “that book” *dramatic sound* … he would just write:

“So here’s my ode to creativity. Most of these stories are true and some are not real. When it comes to creativity…boundaries have to be stretched to reach new heights”

I have a split personality on this one. On this whole story about Jonah.

First persona: “Ok! He didn’t had interviews with Bob Dylan. His quotes are fake and not real. He’s a fake! Bastard! Cheating on us all! We read the book and it was actually great. So many fresh ideas. So inspiring. What am I thinking?”

Second persona: “To be honest, I simply don’t understand why the hell are people so pumped up by this “failure”. If we take a step back … *swoosh*… almost everything in the world is fake. And we gladly take it, each day. We embraced “fakery” as our daily mantra for the modern society. From Economics, to Justice, to Education, to Social support, to Culture… we are living in an artificial values society. We attribute value to things that if we where sane enough… we didn’t mind them at all. Some of our current practices are obsolete and destructive. We are consuming each other for survival. Actually Forbes is not a good example of a “good example”. I bet thousands and thousand of “obsolete and inaccurate an non-real contents” passed through this magazine all these years. The only mistake Jonah did was to not admit ting that some of the contents where “created by himself” somewhere in the book…

But in the end… we read the book and it was actually great. So many fresh ideas. So inspiring. What am I thinking?”